Ich Glaube an Auto-allumage!

Philippa Wheeler

For my last year or two at work before retirement I
travelled the twenty miles between Abergavenny and Newport on a BMW R65
and later an R60. Most mornings, I waved to another BMW rider
heading the other way.

On Sundays the Godly of the motor cycling fraternity foregather on
the car park at Abergavenny to talk of motor cycles and knees down on
noteworthy corners upcountry. Sensible locals stay home since the
Police are out in force lurking in hedgerows and watching for head
bangers on the Hardwick roundabout. On that summer's day in 1999
I had been upcountry myself and parked the BM for a walk round and a
mug of tea before going home. When I got back to the bike I was
approached. The tall man wondered if perhaps I was the rider who
waved on the Newport road. So I met Timm. There was just a
trace of accent I couldn't quite place until he said he originated from
Hamburg and worked as a translator for a local firm. When he
heard of the German language Lohmann material I had, he offered to look
at it and spent, I would guess, many a lunch hour making sense of the
text that defied my understanding. What follows is courtesy of
Timm Frenzell, my kindly fellow traveller.

A surprising number of cyclemotors seem to have been conceived
during the Second World War and born into post war austerity. The
father of the Lohmann seems to have been one Hermann Teegen who had he
been British would no doubt have been called a Boffin. As the war
ended the victorious Allies raced to secure what they could of German
inventiveness and technology and despatched teams of experts to assess
and report.

One such team was tasked to investigate small compression ignition
engines. However, to date, despite a search at PRO Kew amongst
long lists of British Industrial Objectives Sub-Committee reports, this
one has not been found and whilst it is possible to speculate that
chronic fuel shortages in the latter days of the Third Reich may have a
bearing on research into a paraffin driven engine, that remains
speculation. What we can be sure of is that in those early post
war days the Lohmann created intense interest. Some of the
contemporary soothsayers and prophets saw in the tiny engine a
meaningful future for all powered transport. Hindsight tells us
that, as usual, they were wrong and the Lohmann passed into obscurity
within a few short years.

Ich glaube an Auto-allumage (I believe in
auto-ignition)

This piece published in 1952 was written in a fairly light-hearted
style but is unfortunately incomplete. The testers travel from
Germany by train with the engine and have to find a host cycle in
Poitiers...

"In Poitiers it was unwrapped for the first time and fixed
into the oldest 'torturer' of some French made bicycle. The
installation took one hour but the repair of the 'torturer' took one
whole day. Hidden corroded screws with damaged screw slots or
chewed up hexagons are infinitely time consuming. When dusk
descended , three of us took it in turns to entice the thing to produce
a sound with the leitmotif 'Karrakk'..."

Lohmann and the tender gender

"Next morning at 5 o'clock Robert stood in front of my bed
drenched in sweat: he managed to pedal down the steep hill before the
house, using motor power. Then I ran in the little motor, taking
the whole day. Whenever I approached the house the whole family
plus guests rushed to the window. They knew by now it was not a
Stuka which approached but a bicycle with auxiliary motor. In the
meantime Robert had translated the operating instructions and already
gave theoretical driving instructions."

"However, it was a fisherman, although not quite familiar
with the differences between a crankshaft and a kickstarter crank who
immediately moved about it in a most sensible fashion! He never
rode with too high a compression and cleverly balanced 'more gas and
less compression' on the hills."

"This is my most important observation which has been
reaffirmed five times since: complete ignorami of motor cycling jargon
and of motor technology immediately grasped - in all senses of the word
- the two twist grips. Specialists were the worse the more they
studied the Auto Allumage and the more they were educated about
petroleum's willingness to ignite. The fastest to comprehend were
women, given roughly the following instructions: here is a grip and
there is a grip for twisting. At a certain position the engine
makes a noise like "karrakk", and when you firm up your grip a bit
further, you will hear a woodpecker pecking. That is not
good. So you twist on the left one, and maybe also on the right
one, until it is buzzing. Well, you will see when it pulls
best. The buzzing is just right. There you are, my female
students were immediately at home with the birds and the
bees."

"But the male experts! Running in drivers from
Poulain, test drivers from Salmson, bicycle dealers with diplomas,
super sales reps from the motor cycle industry. The sweat just
pouring out, wise cracks burbling out, elegant improvements in their
heads, time for a cigarette break... they proved to be blind to
observations from eye and ear. If ever I had to employ any test
technicians I would take only women who have not yet been to a
technical college. Crash bang wallop, now I have upset the whole
industry! Stop! A few men are excepted: the Lohmann
constructors. My statement expands the market by 100%.
Well, Max, Fritz and numerous women have thus 'Lohmanned' for about
300km."

Knowing why does not always hurt...

"And then my Chef de file (your most faithful reader
Bockholdt) has freed the gunged up rings. After another 50km of
new running-in time for the rings, the warm Lohmann already started
after three metres of pushing, and in the cold after 10m. It
mattered nothing how cold it was on the outside when you fetch your
Lohmann out of a warm garage. If it cooled down significantly (5
deg C) the metal block had to be warmed through friction, ie:
elbow power, a method of modest efficiency."

"Bockholdt once covered 110 km on one litre (313.26
mpg). Top speed is 23kph (14mph) running on petrol and 27kph
(16.8mph) on diesel fuel. In town 1 litre disappears quicker,
covering hardly 60km (37 miles). I thought this was less due to
consumption rather than due to starting and driving off."

"Knowing how the carburettor worked, Bockholdt and I
succeeded several times..."

And this unfortunately is where the page ends. Other titles
like "100 kilometer fur 70 Pfennig" and "18 Kubik reichten aus" ("18
cubes are enough") evaluate the Lohmann very thoroughly with graphs and
charts and technical detail and talk in harrowing terms of test rides
of astonishing length. More anon, perhaps.

[Any reader having a copy of BIOS report Number 1391, entitled
"Small Compression Ignition Engines", or knowing of a library holding a
copy, please get in touch with
our Lohmann Marque Enthusiast - Editor]